Steve Schwartz <[log in to unmask]> replies to me:

>>Given that the music is a product of the composer's soul, he is the only
>>one who is qualified to say what his piece should be.

>We don't take authors' views of their own work, painters' judgments of
>their own canvanses, or actors' reviews of their own performance as gospel.
>Why does a composer, even Bach and Beethoven, get such dispensation?

We do, and we should.  No one has any business going into a museum, saying
"I don't like Van Gogh's use of green in that picture.  I think it should
be yellow, so I'll change it." Just as it's Van Gogh's decision, and his
alone, how his art should represent both his soul and his techniques, so it
is Bach's, Beethoven's, and that of all composers great and not so great
what form their works should take.  You and others are free to quibble
about the merit of the works, but take them as they are they are and don't
abridge them.

>I grant you that it's very unlikely that any conductor's idiosyncratic
>judgment of Beethoven in particular would be sharper than the composer's.
>But "very unlikely" doesn't mean "impossible," and you still have to judge
>particular performances - not a priori, but on their own terms and within
>the context of Beethoven performances in general.

No, it is impossible.  And if the conductor does not get why Beethoven put
in the repeat and chooses to ignore it, then he ought to choose something
he does get and play that instead, or else leave music altogether and
become a butcher, for that is what he is doing to the music..

>Perhaps I'm missing something.  Would you throw out a performance of, say,
>the Eroica which had imagination and poetry and held narrative interest,
>solely because it didn't observe one of the repeats?

Absolutely, just as I would discard a performance that did observe the
repeats, but lacked other equally essentioal elements.

>If so, we must agree to differ.

Fine.  I'll settle for agreeing with the composers.

-Jocelyn Wang
Culver Chamber Music Series